thats only what you have seen in private servers, there is nothing stopping blizzard going further than that if they wanted.
in fact they could alter the amount of XP gained from various sources, and you could get one level per expansion if they so desired.

Never been on a private server, that's just what I've heard is the hard cap. I gather that they probably could change it, but not without some difficulty. Like how the default bag wasn't designed with expansion in mind, so they can't alter it without risking us losing stuff. It may be that they could alter the hard level cap, but it would risk messing up our characters and stuff.

One level per expansion would be a bad idea (though I don't think you were actually suggesting it.). Again it's psychological - There needs to be that feeling of reward there.

Disclaimer: No I'm not Alliance. I reserve the right to bat for both factions thank you very much.

Being stuck at 95 feels much sillier than going above 100, as level caps tend to be either nice round numbers or one below a nice round number (i.e. 99). I guess 105 might feel a bit silly at first if they stick to the five levels per expansion approach.

People thought, when cata was anounced, that 85 would be silly..... in the end, it didn't matter!

The only thing I can agree with is that the higher the number the higher the doubt for new players to join in.
They have to find something to change the journey to lvl-cap.
For existing players, this is no issue.. they have heirlooms and stuff and they know that leveling is super-fast; a new player doesn't know that.

Sure i dont have Problems running around with Level 328. The number itself is nothing that worries me.
But i am thinking about the leveling process, for a new character or a new starter in wow.

What is your short term Goal when starting a character? Probabaly getting to max Level, no matter what Level exactly that is.

Right now max Level is 90. So yeah getting to max Level is non linear divided into 90 pieces.
We are already at a Point with the new talen System, where you often dont get anything new by gaining a Level, no new spell, no new Talent, kinda nothing than the arbitrary increase of live and mana.

Assume we will reach Level 200 one day. They cant just give us a new spell or a new Talent every Level for 200 Levels or you would Need 3 Keyboards, just to have enough keys to bind.

So yeah in the end we will be stuck with lots of Levels we make without any meaning to them.

I wouldnt mind if those meaningless Levels would get scrapped and we end up beeing max Level = 34, but you get somethign every levelup.

Never been on a private server, that's just what I've heard is the hard cap. I gather that they probably could change it, but not without some difficulty. Like how the default bag wasn't designed with expansion in mind, so they can't alter it without risking us losing stuff. It may be that they could alter the hard level cap, but it would risk messing up our characters and stuff.

That's not how it works, though. Levelling progression is not capped. It's simply '+ stuff.' Of course, you'll get your diminishing returns, which will start hitting harder and harder until you've reached a point where you barely progress from gear at all, but the progression is never actually locked unless the game developer locks it artificially.

When you start tampering with the default bag slots, you'll have to reset the code 'bag slots = 16' to '= >,' you reset the bag slots themselves, since each individual bag slot is its own entity. With level cap, that's not exactly a thing.

That's not how it works, though. Levelling progression is not capped. It's simply '+ stuff.' Of course, you'll get your diminishing returns, which will start hitting harder and harder until you've reached a point where you barely progress from gear at all, but the progression is never actually locked unless the game developer locks it artificially.

When you start tampering with the default bag slots, you'll have to reset the code 'bag slots = 16' to '= >,' you reset the bag slots themselves, since each individual bag slot is its own entity. With level cap, that's not exactly a thing.

I'm no game designer but I have definitely heard that the levels are hard capped at 255. Which may just be so GM's (and I guess characters in private servers) can go up to higher levels, and it could theoretically be risen. Or it could be hardwired into the game, I don't know.

Last edited by Protar; 2013-10-28 at 11:51 AM.

Disclaimer: No I'm not Alliance. I reserve the right to bat for both factions thank you very much.

I can't see how so many people here are failing to grasp the concept that OP has put forward and just throwing out the idea without discussing it.

I for one think that level 100+ wouldn't fit into Blizzards standard polished products. I would say 99 would be the cleanest option but they have decided to go past that point to at least 100 already. Its a lot nicer to say "Hey I have 4 level 99's", then to say "Hey I have 4 level 115's".

I like the idea of an alternative level progression from 100 + but arguably it already exists with ilvl. I wouldn't be surprised if 100 was max level and then they opted for just more dlc approach; which I wouldn't be against, but it may become less exciting then a new expansion where all the skills/spells change dramatically.

And for people saying max level is 255... That is probably because it is the largest hexadecimal number. Which may well have been used when coding the initial engine. They could change it to whatever number they like if they wanted too.

I'm no game designer but I have definitely heard that the levels are hard capped at 255. Which may just be so GM's (and I guess characters in private servers) can go up to higher levels, and it could theoretically be risen. Or it could be hardwired into the game, I don't know.

It took us 10 years to reach 100 (if that is the cap next xpac).... so to reach 255 from 100...... do you realize how may years that is?
If 1 xpac will be running a year, as they want now and we assume they are going with 10 lvls/xpac, we are talking about 15 years to lvl 250.

I'm no game designer but I have definitely heard that the levels are hard capped at 255. Which may just be so GM's (and I guess characters in private servers) can go up to higher levels, and it could theoretically be risen. Or it could be hardwired into the game, I don't know.

Well; I don't know how the rating-to-level scaling looks at lvl 255, but that really is the only 'hard cap' I can imagine. Any other hard cap on levels would be artificial, and code-wise inefficient. It's simply not needed; it doesn't do anything. I'd like saying you build in a mechanism that doesn't allow you to build a table higher than three meters even though your table doesn't get higher than one meter to begin with. There's no reason you should build in such a mechanism. Everyone can see why you wouldn't want a table three meters high, but nobody's going do make a tool that automatically ends any attempt at building a higher table. It's just a waste of effort.

All the games I know that use this system are also the games where leveling is the biggest and longest character progression, like RO/LA2. They are also games where endgame doesn't start at top level only, and actually starts somewhere near it.
People level for months and years in those games, and when they're finally done, they get a new progression path in "elite" levels that let them progress for some more months. Also people get stat/skill points for levels there that they can assign, which doesn't exist for WoW.

Of course, leveling is part of game in WoW, but it's not part of long-term progression. WoW has raid/PvP tiers for that instead. You could probably say that we grind gear in WoW just like we grind levels in such games.
I don't see any reason for this to exist in WoW. It would just be confusing, and serve no point.

Whenever I see the word prestige thrown out in the context of a MMO I see a player who rolled his character for the wrong reason. There is no such thing as professional WoW. If there was then I would be more sympathetic to the idea of WoW prestige. If you want prestige I suggest you look for it outside of a MMO. Personally I think they should make the level grind longer so that players aren't raiding within a week of the expansion's release. It would be nice if I didn't level cap within the week next time around despite only putting in an hour or two a day.

Whenever I see the word prestige thrown out in the context of a MMO I see a player who rolled his character for the wrong reason. There is no such thing as professional WoW. If there was then I would be more sympathetic to the idea of WoW prestige. If you want prestige I suggest you look for it outside of a MMO. Personally I think they should make the level grind longer so that players aren't raiding within a week of the expansion's release. It would be nice if I didn't level cap within the week next time around despite only putting in an hour or two a day.

It's just a name. Just like Elite items from ToES Protectors. That's not the point of this topic...
Point is - what if new wow levels would be "Level 60-Super" instead of "Level 110".
Which is, yeah, not really fitting for WoW.

I'd like to see a character progression path at max level that can be advanced while participating in any aspect of the game, and I'd like it to not have anything to do with gear.

People can advance themselves in this new system from doing lots of different things - Participating in dungeons, scenarios, world events, earning an achievement, using their professions, doing pet battles, etc.

Rewards should not be power based, because then it becomes an obligation for people who have to be on the bleeding edge of progression (or obsessive people like me). Rewards should be more like perks that make playing your character more convenient, fun, and lucrative. I'd like it to be somewhat like D3's forthcoming paragon revamp, where players can choose from a large variety of options to allocate their points. Off the top of my head, I would think of rewards like these:

trying to insult someone by using his words for your benefit is wrong.

he's not saying anything about hardcore prog or w/e. he's saying he want elite lvls after 100 so the number doesnt go higher

First of all, keep your poor analytical skills to yourself. I wasn't trying to insult him. Second, in this game, what "elite" is exactly that. Lastly, if his whole problem is, "Numbers above 100?! I'm not used to that! Do something else!", then he has a different set of problems other than what comes after lvl 100...